Singapore!!!

This weekend I have been to Singapore for 5 days! The flight was 4-5 hours - so this plus all the wasted time to and at the airport it took almost two whole days to get there and get back to Taipei, but at least I had 3 full days there together with my German friends Tientien, Jiaxiasha and Anker:

First some general impressions about Singapore:
As some of you might have heard, the Singaporian government is very strict about things. The fine for drinking or eating in the subway is 500-1000$, chewing gums are basically completely banned and owning drugs results in capital punishment. These are the downsides, the upsides beeing a highly organized and clean city with one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

friendly warning sign!

The second thing that is very special about Singapore is that it is probably the most culturally diverse place I've seen so far in my life. There are lots of Chinese people, Indians, Malayans, Westerners and a bunch of other ethnicities. A subway ride turns to a multicultural experience there. Whats also interesting is that there are culturally concentrated neighborhoods: a Chinatown, a Little India and a Muslim hood. We were especially fond of Little India which was close to our hostel and implied a supply of super-delicious and cheap Indian food for us. Especially those Banana Pratas! I had at least two of them every day!

Indian Banana Prata!

Indian food!

I have been wondering if the cultural diversity in that extent is the inevitable trend for the future for most huge cities as a result of globalisation and increasing emigration and travelling. I think I'd like that.

Oh and as Singapore is nearly lying on the equator, all year round there are around 30° and if there wasn't the city - there would be a massive jungle! The city is also extremely green and offers some stunning nature.

one of the coolest buildings I've ever seen! Smoothly integrated into the surrounding jungle ;-)

詹立宏認為他是一隻猴子

First day:
On our first day we went to Singapores central shopping street packed with stores of exclusive brands in fancy buildings. This wasn't too special though - just one of those strongholds of capitalism.
From there we checked out a nearby park where we saw something that I'd describe as a one-tree-forest!

All this is seriously one single tree! How cool is that!?
I'm seriously considering to kick palm trees from the pole position in my my favorite trees list and to put these first!

Later we met up with a friend of Anker who happened to spent his exchange semester in Singapore and all together we checked out a local beach.

unfortunately the Ocean view was impaired through lots of cargo-ships ... but well, a beach is a beach!

Second day:
After starting our day with a massive meal in Little India (as usual) we went to the Muslim hood where we also visited a mosque. This was especially interesting for me as I've actually never been in one before. There were also a bunch of guys inside telling us ethusiastically the basics about Islam and the Koran.

Mosque

From there we walked quite a distance to the Sigapore harbor area where we saw my personal highlight - Marina Bay! Pretty damn cool architecture - I said to Karl that for a travel guide I'd give 5 of 5 stars for the architecture!

The Marina Bay Sands hotel - probably Singapores most famous landmark!

following the advice from my friend Tobi, whom I met the next day, we managed to slip on top of the Marina Bay Sands hotel to get a fancy view

pretty cool light and water show!

On the third day we went to the Gardens by the bay in the morning. Its a pretty fancy "park" right behind the Marina Bay Sands hotel. Unfortunately we didn't have too much time there as we had planned to meet up with Karls friend again to go for a hike to a nearby nature preserve.

huge baby - only the hand is touching the ground

hiking at the MacRitchie Reservoir

unfortunately we got into a heavy rain shower and except Tiantian no one had thouht of bringing an umbrella

But all the hiking through the rain was totally worth it
because...
we got to see MONKEYS! Or rather a monkey-gang!

Here they are robbing an Indian couple :D the plastic bags lying on the ground were theirs.
After the monkeys found out that those bags were not containing anything to eat, we could observe how they followed the Indian couple that had moved on. Going after them we found that they had succeeded in stealing an other plastic bag with this big loaf of cake.

He's the king! After snacking for a while, he caught sight of a monkey lady that was walking past and taking the cake in one hand, he started some sexual interaction still holding his cake in one hand :D

Badass monkey!

Rather tired after the hike, we moved back to our hostel and on the way back checked out some more of Little India where some kind of festival took place.

we also visited this Indian temple, which was extremely cool with Indian style chaotic activity everywhere: people selling stuff; a three people procession around a Indian god statue - one of them holding a banana in his hand; women preparing food as sacrificial offering; a sign saying "Please don't pour milk over Sri Nagar" :D

...and then this goddess :D

Later in the evening, after relaxing at our hotel for a bit and haning out in our hostels Jacuzzi (yes our hostel had a Jucuzzi on the roof!) I finally met up with my old friend Tobi that I knew since school from 5th grade. He is also spending in exchange semester in Singapore.

and some more impressions:

foooood! Mjammjamjam!

This was seriously the best Mango Lassi I ever had (Anker agreed to this)! Sooo good!

fresh coconut juice!

I gave the coconuts last sip as a gift to Anker so that he would have to trash it instead of me :D Not consenting with my ingenious plan he threw the coconet to me and as I refused to catch it, it crashed on the escalator... whoopsy! Fortunately we didn't get a 1000$ish fine^^

How am I supposed to eat it?

Yeah - this way!

Goods in Little India:
This is the perfume a real man needs! (~1,10€)
"We don't need a brand - Let's just call it Men's!"

On last bad thing about Singapore though:
... Airconditioning ... WTF?!
Of course, if there is something like 35-40° outside, then airconditioning is a blessing and I don't know how I would have survived some days back in Japan and also in the beginning here in Taipei without using my rooms airconditioning. BUT why the fuck would you use airconditioning during a decent 30-28° to bring down the temperature to 18° - so that you freeze?!
But thats exactly what Singaporians like to do it seems >8-(
So whenever we entered a subway or a local store, I had to put on my sweater (implying that I had to carry it around for exactly and only this reason all the time). Now also take into account that airconditioning firstly eats up tons of energy (which is obviously scarce, polluting and expensive), secondly that the colder it is inside, the harder it is to adapt to a hot temperature outside and thirdly that many airconditioners are not properly maintained and therefore spread out germs.
Sooo stupid! And I thought airconditioning use in Taiwan was annoying.
Maybe I should consider, writing my master thesis about "welfare loss through excessive airconditioning use in Singapore"...

... its time to end.

trip to southern Taiwan: Kenting and Kaohsiung

This weekend I've been travelling to the south of Taiwan (Taipei is in the north) to Kenting and Kaoshiung (the 2nd biggest city in Taiwan) together with my friend Jiaxiasha. From Taipei we took a highspeed train (300kmh!) and got to Kaohsiung in under 2hours. From there we had to move on to Kenting with a rather slow bus and that took about 2-3 hours for the remaining 20% of distance :-/
However this was totally worth it as the south has a tropical climate so that we enjoyed our first day with 35° at a sunny beach - oh yeah!

In the evening we also got to taste lots of delicious stuff at the local nightmarket. Our most exquisite aquisition was a fried Oreo (and fried Snickers as well as Mars) that turned out to be not that bad. Massively filling though.

Fried Oreo - mjami!

The only bummer was that our hotels oceanview turned out to be more of a metal board view, which was placed right in front of our window^^

For the next day we had planned to go to a relatively nearby national Park to go for a good hike. First we tried to take the cheap option - getting there by bus ... and got lost immediately.
After failing to ask locals for help (because of our insufficient Chinese skills) at a local 7/11 they called a taxi for us and after that we ended up having our private driver for the rest of the day: He drove us to the national park, picked us up from there later, then drove us to a hot spring place, waited there for us for 2h and finally drove us back to our hotel in Kenting :D And that cost us only 25€ each - for more than 8h of having a private driver! I could certainly never afford that in Germany^^

The hiking was also pretty cool. When we arived at the park, the guides there told us that the park would close in about 4h and the hike up the mountain would take around 4 so we should go for the 2h waterfall hike. We thought "Challenge accepted!" though and went up the mountain. Partially running, we managed to do the mountain hike in 2 and ended up doing the waterfall hike as well in a total of 3,5h! In your face, parkguide!
Lots of pictures here:

on the top!

Whats this?!

Duiring the hike, the sky looked like it would rain soon, so to diversify my risk I made a bet with Jiaxiasha that it would rain and whos wrong would have to pay our ride to the hotsprings.

of course it didn't rain :-/
...hm that's a good thing though, right?!

pretty cool trees!

Snakes and bees!!!

"accomodation population 5 people" - Ja ne is kla!
actually the English on signs here is often pretty bad and you sometimes have to guess the intended meaning. Its like they used google translate...

Monkey!!! First monkey I have ever seen in wildlife!

The hotsprings afterwards were the best thing I could have imagined for that evening. Soooo incredibly relaxing after the hike! If you come to Taiwan - go there!

The next day we also spent at the beach and moved to Kaohsiung in the evening. For our stay there I had found an extremely cheap hotel (22€/night total in citycenter) and we were quite curious how it would be. Again I found that its always like "you get what you pay for" and there was a lot of mold around and this bathroom:

WTF? Watching people taking a shit instead of watching TV or what?! :-/

However Kaohsiung was quite cool. We rented bikes at the local bike scheme (similar to Paris Vélib') and biked around pretty much the whole day. After checking out in the evening we even biked our stuff to the far off train station^^
Here some impressions of Kaohsiung:

eating a snickers - it seems I fell in love with snickers since I came to Asia. Eat at least 3/week. They are so practical! :D

more fancy trees. These Taiwanese trees are definitely my favorite trees right after palm trees! :D

Kaohsiungs iconic 85 Sky Tower. Interestingly it's supposed to look like the Chinese character 高 which means tall and is part of the city's name.

cool view from top of the tower. Note that huge yellow duck on the left!

everyone here seems to be crazy about this giant duck. I heard it's some kind of art project and this duck is actually travelling around the world

Lihong and the giant duck

ducks everywhere!

hanging out at an old Brithish consulate at the coast.

Such a nice place there!

some Taiwanese girls wanted to take pictures with us - sure! :D

temple...

meeting some local children at a restaurant. They were very fond of us saying "Whazzzuup?" - Scary movie style
And I learned to say "high five" in Chinese from them - jizhang! :D

goodbye Kaohsiung

That's it, next weekend I'll travel to Singapore with Anker, Jiaxiasha and Tientien!
More about this in a week ;-)

Karaoke, Meditation, proper Celebration of German Unity Day and other stuff

Thursday I went to a Karaoke place! This had actually been my first time really singing Karaoke and I was quite curious how it would be. I expected me to be rather uncomfortable about singing but it turned out that I competely stopped caring very quickly and we had lots of fun!

Whats different to the Karaoke places in Germany is that you get your own Karaoke room here for your group so it's much more private. And we also had a nice buffett with food and drinks.

Anker was also really into it :D

And on Friday evening I went to join a Zen meditation group. They had handed out flyers at the campus, advertising free meditation lessons and as I am recently trying out to meditate (got an app for that^^), I thought this might be interesting for me. And it turned out to be quite an intense experience for me - I think it was the first time that I had really been meditating with getting into a deeper level of consciousness.
Furthermore an Indian guy there told me afterwards about a German Buddhist nun who is living around Taipei that I could meet if I am interested in learning more about Zen meditation and Buddhism and I might actually meet up with her soon (learning more about Buddhism is on my bucket list ;-) ).

This weekend we also got a Taifun once again. But this was even less strong than the rather weak last one and again it was just raining mildly all the time.

But I got this stunning view at least! Reminds me of the Batman movies...

Some other impressions:

whenever I go to the 7/11 convenience store, besides my usual groceries I also buy something weird, just to try something new. This was my most recent aquisition - tasted very strange.^^
So far I also got to try almondmilk and papayamilk this way.

my good Swedish friend and tennis partner Larsson!

In this lovely picture you can also marvel at my new Asian-style haircut!

bird-head! Mjami! 

Furthermore to end the misery of Ankers food blog, I decided to make a guest post for his blog. Starting the series "Lino Klagt", the first post is about my contact with the Taiwanese "Lebensmittelmafia". Its in German though: http://myessen.blogspot.de/2013/10/sondergastbeitrag-lino-klagt-1.html

Soon Anker might also write a guest post for me about his experiences at the Taiwanese Oktoberfest!

and of course Anker and me had to celebrate the German unity day properly! :D

good stuff, day at the beach!

Heyho,
After all the bad stuff from last week, things seem to have turned around and I'm finally good again, the flute stopped playing (I hope the guy didn't stumble upon this blog^^), I got german bread and I've spent a day at a Taiwanese beach!
Especially being at the beach was quite neat. We even managed to rent some surfboards so I could go surfing again - babam!!! And what striked me was that we didnt even have to pay a deposit for the surfboards - people here are just so trustworthy it seems that no one would steal it - I like that a lot! In general people here seem to be incredibly honest and decent when it comes to business. In terms of this, my experiences in Mainland China were actually completely different where every taxidriver tried to squeeze as much money out of me as he could...

And on the weekend we had a proper German style "Abendbrot"! I found a german bakery, "Oma Ursel's" where I got bread, pretzels and jam and that together with some other stuff that Anker got for his birthday we got quite a decent meal together.

It admit that it might not look that fancy, but for us it was a feast!

The taifun that came over Taiwan recently has also been rather mild here in Taipei. It just rained a lot here (it rained cats and dogs!). But as I was lying in bed anyway, that was not too bad for me and I guess I missed out on less stuff (lower opportunity costs of being sick an economist would say ;-) ).

From all the last weeks lying in bed, it seems that my mattress got even thinner (from about 3 fingers width to less than 1 finger) so today I ordered a new thick mattress from IKEA! Anker got the same one about two weeks ago and its only 50€. Tomorrow I'll probably have it - yay!

sick Lihong - Anker made this picture when he came to visit me.
The overwhelming pity of this picture slightly amuses me now^^

At a famous dumpling restaurant - it was once rated one of the best restaurants in the world!

On the weekend with a group of people we checked out the famous Keelung nightmarket. Unfortunately as Keelung is a horbour city, there was mostly seafood so I didn't like most of the stuff but we had a good time there anyway.

Mjami!

On Saturday I wanted to check out the Yangmingshan national park, which is very close to Taipei. However the whole expedition was a complete fail. For some weird reason, the whole place smelled like foul eggs - first I thought I was just a local sanitation problem, but as it smelled like this everywhere my second guess would be some plant whose polls smell like this. Furtermore it rained most of the time and worst, I lost track and ended up hiking just around the mountain peak. When I found out, it was too late to get up there before the dark -.- All in all I didn't even get a single good view that day. But weirdly I found the trip still a pleasant experience.

Today Anker showed me this short story. Its entirely made up of the word "shi" just with different intonations. But even the same intonation must not mean its the same meaning.
Isn't that crazy?! At least most of the written characters are different...

I also realized that there are actually words, that I can say but not read, words I can read but not write, and also words that I can read but not say - it's sooo strange. But I'm still highly motivated to get going with it.
Yesterday I learned a "polite measure word for people" together with measure words for "stick-like things" and "things that come in pairs". Its such a crazy language!

And by now its already one month that I am here in Taipei - time's flying!